The US Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) is now making death rates for pneumonia, heart attack, and heart failure at US hospitals available online at their Hospital Compare website. The website was launched in 2005 in hopes that hospitals will improve quality of care if they are able to compare themselves with other hospitals. According to HHS, the mortality rates have been adjusted to take into account how sick each patient is. Is this information helpful to patients? Some believe that death rates don’t necessarily measure the quality of care hospitals provide. However, most agree that giving the public more information on hospital performance is, in general, a good thing. Full story.
Tags: death rate, heart attack, heart failure, hospital, hospital rating, pneumonia
Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
`I believe that hospitals, clinics, and doctor’s offices should provide the public information on their conditions. We even had a hospital close down an entire floor because of the conditions, even though it was state-of-the art. Afterall, medical facilities are supposed to cure us–not kill us!
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I need one answer: Do you think that hospitals are being lax when they are treating
people with pneumonia. I have heard of patients in hospital dying from this disease,
one would think that hospitals should be able
cure pneumonia, unless I do not understand this particular disease.